Thursday, August 2, 2012

WHOA TAGXEDO!

This afternoon, I came home after another awesome day in my classroom and fell into my usual routine. I turned on the tube, watched Friends, caught up on blogs and Pinterest, and ate dinner around 4:30. Okay, I'm kidding.. I don't eat that early!! It's usually about 5:00 (early bird special).

Anyway, I was stopped in my tracks by the website: Tagxedo. It's very similar to Wordle. In a nut shell, wordles are online tools to create word clouds. You plug in a text and the wordle jumbles it together in a fancy looking design. Usually, the more prominent words are larger and the lesser words are smaller. You can then change the color and shape of them. Last night, I was testing out a Wordle on my computer, but it wouldn't work on my Mac. Ugh. I surrendered.

Then, an angel introduced me to Tagxedo. I promise I'm not getting paid for this post. It's the same idea of a Wordle: plug in your text and click create! After the computer jumbles your words, you can change the shape, font, color and whatnot.

Naturally, I started experimenting and creating. It's safe to say that I had a good time.

First, I started with my blog. I plugged in my URL and hit create. Then, I made it into the shape of an apple. Cute, huh?

Here are some the words that stick out to me the most (the non obvious ones): family, brain, party, glitter, and wonderful.

I couldn't stop there. I had to continue experimenting. So I made my word cloud into the shape of my favorite historical figure, who happens to be one of our former Presidents: Abraham Lincoln.

I couldn't stop there. I needed MORE! Next, I plugged in our school's webpage. I even made it into the shape of a school bus with our school colors. Unfortunately, the school bus still looked too much like Abe Lincoln. I stuck with the basic "cloud" for this one.

At this point, I started to reach the point of borderline obsessed. Oh well, I kept plugging in information. Next, I went with my twitter feed....

...but it wouldn't work. Darn.

I took the loss like a champion and continued on with the search, "London 2012".

I changed the colors to red, white, and blue and fashioned this search into a star. Lovely. Just lovely.

Now, it's your turn! Share with me the fun and interactive websites you use in the classroom.

I have seen people mention tagxedo on interest, and wondered what the difference to wordle was. Thanks for sharing. Plus my district just got all the teachers Macs, so this may be a great option for word clouds.